Feedback for Strava's new maps (OpenStreetMap)

Strava is actively working with Mapbox (the open source mapping platform that supplies us with OpenStreetMap) to make sure we offer the best mapping experience for our athletes.

Mapbox gives us the opportunity to create customized maps that fit aesthetically and functionally with Strava. With open source data, errors or missing map assets can be fixed quickly and efficiently, creating the most detailed and robust maps for cycling and running. We believe in the potential and power of maps by OSM and we're focused on giving the Strava community the best experience possible.

Where did Street View go?

Mapbox does not provide Street View functionality at this time. We realize this functionality was valuable for some athletes; we'll do our best to re-incorporate it when possible.

August 14th, 2015:

We’re 100% committed to making Strava better for our athletes, and we hear you loud and clear regarding this switch from Google Maps to OSM. We didn’t anticipate how strongly some of our athletes would react to the change and apologize that it was a sudden disappointment to some of you. We could have done a better job explaining our reasoning and bracing you for the switch, handling the roll-out, taking more time to work with Mapbox, etc.

It may not seem like it now, but we believe deeply that changing to OSM is the best choice we can make for our athletes and our company. There is enormous potential and creative flexibility offered by the new maps and we ask that you stick with us and continue providing feedback as we bring that potential to fruition.

Your reports on the quality of the maps, such as missing map data and satellite image quality, can be addressed. We are working closely Mapbox, our OSM map provider, on both satellite imagery and road data and we’re invested in improving your experience. By providing specific examples of satellite and road data, we can act quickly to update the map data.

We've noted all your comments regarding street view, and understand how important it is to you. The top use for street view seems to center around segments, in viewing segment start and end coordinates as well as viewing the road surface and surroundings. Street view is still available when creating segments, and it may be possible to return street view to other areas of the segment experience. We will have more to share on this soon.

Our designers are compiling initial thoughts on how Strava can leverage certain styles, colors and shading to customize the map experience. We are already incorporating the existing feedback we’ve received here. Please continue to send us your feedback on how the look and feel of the maps can be improved.

- The Strava Team

August 21st, 2015:

When you visit a segment page, you can now click either endpoint of the segment to be brought to the street view for that location. Or, you can select one of the options from the map view menu (pictured below).

This addition is not meant to fully resolve your concerns about the switch to Mapbox. We're doing the best we can to respond to your feedback quickly while still maintaining our commitment to elevate your map experience with Mapbox. It's going to take time and we ask that you stick with us, and we'll continue to take your feedback to heart and iterate whenever possible.

September 2nd, 2015

We've just updated our maps to support four languages: English, French, German and Spanish. Now, if you're traveling or viewing the map in another country, you'll be able to see map labels and place names in your language.

How it works: If you have Strava set to one of the above four languages, you will see map labels in that language. For any other language that is not supported at this time, you will see the default map which displays regional language. To change your language preferences, use the menu at the bottom of any Strava page.

This map update also refreshes imagery for the Satellite map in select areas.

October 22nd, 2015

We're excited to announce updated maps in collaboration with Mapbox, featuring an intuitive display of map data and activity-specific styling. Designed especially with runners and cyclists in mind, we focused on a visual experience that would relay the map information we believe most helpful to our athletes:

Offset road labels for better visibility along activities

Visually distinct running and cycling paths

Highlighted pedestrian areas, outdoor areas, and parks

Vivid terrain styling and high-contrast mountain areas

Lower map label density for urban areas

Major highways and high-traffic roads de-prioritized in grey

Added points of interest most relevant to activity on Strava

Contour lines and elevation labels on satellite view

This is the first of several map projects we are working on as part of our ongoing goal to make your mapping experience on Strava more accurate, informative and rich.

@Anders I have/had a wish to do similar custom Mapbox style, suitable mainly for MTB. Unfortunately after messing up with Mapbox I came to conclusion, it is not possible at this time.

That is because Mapbox currently only supports a limited subset of tags/info that are available in OSM.

Unfortunately the the most important info for MTBers and hikers - TRACK GRADE and MTB SCALE are not supported yet :/When they will be, a lot better map styles will be possible, so I guess telling Mapbox and Strava about that could speed up the support of it.I already contacted Mapbox about that months ago.

If You examine map styles in the attachment (those and more are available through StraTistiX extension), you can see that of those 9 styles only Hike Bike Map style diferentiates between Track Grades with different line styles. As I already said, unfortunately this is not possible (yet) in Mapbox styles...

Please consider prioritizing the use of the local language over English on these maps. i.e. use the "name" tag in OSm, rather than the "name:en" tag. This is especially true for MTB single tracks whose names are often awkwardly translated to English.

@Guy - we've heard both sides of the story now, from users with your perspective on labels in the local language and from users who want all English labels for maps anywhere in the world. We made a change to support some languages with our maps, so if you'd like to preview map labels in one of our supported languages you can change your language preferences at the bottom of any Strava page. The page will refresh and you'll see map labels in that language.

This is great timing, because we also just pushed 500,000km2 of additional high-resolution imagery onto your satellite basemap. We made these updates to our Mapbox satellite data source which powers your custom satellite style, so the updates got pulled into your map automatically.

This new imagery is focused on more than 100 cities and suburbs all over the world (including areas with high Strava activity), with coverage equivalent to the entire area of Germany or California. All new imagery goes down to zoom level 18. Here are just a few of the cities with massively improved imagery: São Paulo, San José, Prague, Loughborough, Kyiv, Hong Kong, Seoul, Bengaluru.

Please let us know if you have any questions about our imagery improvements. We'll be following this up with 3 million km2 of additional imagery in the near future – stay tuned!

You know, I really wish that I was wrong. ...... I was cycling with a friend just a few days ago and made the flippant remark that whenever the sycophants started hailing the benefits of the "new strava", it was very likely that Strava Management would come out with another - wonderful - enhancement.

Roger, I just fixed the name of that trail. However, it might get fixed faster if you clicked on the link in the lower right part of the map (Improve the Map) and you can place your comment on the map. This will mean a lot more people who fix bugs on OSM will see the problem and it should get fixed faster.

I had a nice surprise trying out the map in Chinese - the labels outside China in the map all turned to the local languages (Hebrew and Arabic in my case). The interface remained Chinese. Would be nice if you added something like "international English" to your viewing options.

I agree with those who lament the lack of StreetView. That's super-useful for route navigation. Presently there's a kludged link to StreetView at the beginning and end of segments. That's fantastic. More of this sort of thing would be better. There should be a way to link to StreetView from arbitrary places on a segment, activity, effort, or route.

1) Symbolize paths differently from footways and cycleways since paths are quite often dirt or gravel trails. It would also be good to symbolize paths differently by foot=yes/designated vs bicycle=yes/designated as done with footways and cycleways. This might be best achieved by simply adding a slight background to the existing solid yellow cycleway symbol and dashed yellow footway symbol if the way is a path. For mountain biking, knowing whether bikes are allowed on a path is key when building a route.

2) Add this map style to the route builder.

I've been using the Strava heatmaps and slide tool for working with OSM, but I'm now finally looking into moving my activity data over to Strava since you guys are improving your maps. Good work.

We made a small change to the map when creating a Strava Route: The Strava Route Builder will now default to Mapbox maps powered by OSM but the map options have remained the same. To chose a different map view, click on the cog icon for the map settings.

I like OSM! Here for Southwest Germany the maps are much better. Epecially for off-road cycling. More Places, small Mountain tops even small Paths are named. The graphical look is much nicer then google maps.

Germany has no street View cover due to privacy protection - so I don't miss it.

And finally I don't trust Google at all, so it is a good step to go away from google!

I'm not loving the switch. When looking for starts and ends of segments you used to be able to zoom in on the aerial photo and actually see where they were on a photo. All I see now is a black screen. I really do wonder who at Strava comes up with these hair brained ideas... if you're not careful a better app will come along and you'll be yesterday's news very quickly.

Sorry Strava, I'll be cancelling my premium membership if I can't get access to Google maps. The region I live in has terrible map coverage by almost all of the alternative mapping solutions and after trying for a few months to get used to them, I done with these inferior maps.

One of the most valuable features of Google to me are their satellite maps, which I use quite often for backcountry tracking, and quite frankly, none of the other providers even come close.

Perhaps you need to offer premium members access to better maps.

Curiously, another online service I use also tried to switch over to open source maps but gave it up after the outcry. In the end, they decided to make it a part of their premium offering, which seemed fair to me.

Damn it that you really had to switch the global heat maps from google, at least there I could use streetview before to check roads while planning new routes, now that is also gone :( Why can't we have multiple options???